At the outset of our inquiry we are met by the ancient belief that the
British Isles are divided by a racial frontier which separates the
western or Celtic peoples from the eastern inhabitants of Saxon origin.
It was my fortune to be born on the border of the Celtic fringe, and no
one growing up under these circumstances can fail to realize that the
Celtic spirit is a real and live force. Is it a racial antagonism which
is elicited when Celt and Saxon are in conflict? What is the physical
difference between a Celt and a Saxon? That is a matter to which I have
given my attention for some years, and the results of my inquiries I
will place before you as briefly as I may. In the audience now before me
there are certain to be pure representatives of all our four
nationalities; Celts and Saxons as pure as any in the country are sure
to be present in any university audience. But except for a trick of
speech or a local mannerism, the most expert anthropologist cannot tell
Celt from Saxon or an Irishman from a Scotsman. There are, to be sure,
certain physical types which prevail in one country more than in
another, but I do not know of any feature of the body or any trait of
the mind, or of any combination of features or traits which will permit
an expert, on surveying groups of university students, to say this group
is from Scotland, that from Wales, the third from Ireland, and the
fourth from England. In stature and in colouring, in form of skull and
of face, elaborate trials have revealed national difference only of the
most minor kind. Nay, we know very well the physical features of the
Saxon pioneers who became the masters of England and dominated the
lowlands of Scotland. Their graveyards have been examined by the score,
but it is not by the form of the skulls and the strength of the limb
bones that we know we are dealing with the graves of ancient Saxons, but
by the implements, ornaments, and utensils which were buried with them.
As regards shape of skull or form of bones I do not think a practised
craniologist could distinguish the skulls and bones found in an ancient
Saxon cemetery in Surrey from the remains of a Celtic grave in
Connemara, so much are Celtic and Saxon types alike. Were we to dress
one group of fishermen from the coast of Norfolk and another from the
shores of Connaught in the same garb, I do not think there is an
anthropologist in Europe who by mere inspection could tell the Irish
from the English group. From a physical point of view the Celt and Saxon
are one; whatever be the source of their mutual antagonism, it does not
lie in a difference of race. It is often said that we British are a
mixed and mongrel collection of types and breeds; the truth is that as
regards physical type the inhabitants of the British Isles are the most
uniform of all the large nationalities of Europe.